apsara

The dancing hall at Preah Khan is where dancers don't smile. They dance. They are slave dancers.

They dance for the king. He is the god-king. He has resurrected his desire and fury creating new customs and new decrees for dancers. They dance for the mighty and powerful. They dance Khmer stories about war, conquest, harvests, seasons, sun and moon. 

They are submissive dances of life/death. They dance to celebrate life. They dance the celebration of tranquility. They dance or die. They wear tinkling bands of gold around wrists and ankles. They wear diamond diademed crowns and shimmering silk clothing. They do not smile. Their faces are frozen in the trance of dance.

One dances to escape the tyranny. She's danced all her short, sweet life.

The hall of dancers is surrounded by columns, portals and broken jumbled green moss stones. Thick gnarled silk-cotton tree roots crawl toward dancers. They dance through roots, past Shiva and Vishnu. The preserver and destroyer of life. 

Dance movement is motivated by emotional expression. Dance is about itself. The freedom of creation. A playful approach to meaning. Dance allows the viewer to interpret. 

 

dance

A young woman with delicate hands, perfect posture, a five pointed gold star painted on her forehead and scuffed white ballet slippers waiting for the train turned to me.

Did you hear Mercy Cunningham, the dancer died?

No. What have you heard?

I study dance, that’s how I know. He was amazing. Dance is all about ambiguity, poetry, and acceptance. He had independent detachment. He had creative imagination. He said dance was isolated yet cooperating and independent. And, he said, because he believed in the magic of dance, that when you dance for a fleeting moment you feel alive.

What do you see? I asked. I see a circle of movement. A connected unity, a language in space. It’s more than that, said a one legged amputee leaning against the wall, There are five rhythms in dance.

You start with a circle, it’s a circular movement from the feminine container. She is earth.

Really? said the woman. Yes, then you have a line, from the hips moving out. This is the masculine action with direction. He is fire.

Chaos is next, a combination of circle and lines where the male and female energies interact. This is the place of transformation.

I see. And then, after chaos is the lyrical, a leap, a release. This is air. And the last element of dance is stillness. Out of stillness is born the next movement.

  

face dust

Greetings,

Walk outside, feel the dust beneath your feet.  Walking is a luxury.

The street blends into the prayer circuit. Two large chorten furnaces breath fire, sending plumes of gray and black smoke into the sky. Figures of all ages and energies, sellers of juniper and cedar. Buyers collect their offerings, throwing sweet smelling twigs into the roaring fire, finger prayer beads and resume their pilgrimage. They flow and shuffle. Feel the softness being with the ageless way of meditation, a walking meditation.

It is a peaceful manifestation of the eternal now. The sky fills with clear light. 

A Cambodian man sits in his WW I wheelchair. His torso ends with two mid thigh leg stubs. 

A young boy in tattered clothing stands on a log. He throws a large girl doll in the air. It spins, performing somersaults. It crashes in the dust. 

He poises on the log, flexes his muscles and jumps. He lands on the doll's face. He smashes his feet dancing on the face, laughing in rising dust. 

At a different ground zero called Tahir Square a young girl referring to Egypt's backward pubic education system that depends so much on repetition holds a sign urging Mubarak to leave quickly, "Make it short. This is history, and we have to memorize it for school."

Metta.

River

Greetings,

I flow a thick deep brown. Heavy wet season rains rinse my desire. I clean the world of perceptions.

I increase my fish productivity and cause havoc for low lying homes, flooding humans out. They swim in the mainstream. My current is strong. It has no boundaries. Water wears down stone. 

Joy is seeing endless green rice paddies waving for miles in every direction. White cumulus clouds dance in a blue sky. The green penetrates my eyes. Green releases me from the stone cold dead glass and brass cities trembling fear. 

Joy is a boy doing a perfect back flip off a hill into my river. Joy escapes gravity. Joy joins his friends laughing and swimming. His father casts a net as serene shimmering strands arch over water sailing into green. My river renews life.

Orange robed monks reflect my calm surface. Turbulent roaming charges may apply in the curious dimension of laughter's gratitude.

My awareness bliss flow is this transience. You can't swim in the same river twice.

Metta.

Street 2

Greetings,

Summer's here and the time is write for dancing in the street. Hanoi style. You can't photograph a memory. The Ministry of Obfuscation welcomes you with open arms. I am an accident that can think. Celebrate your imagination.

Metta.